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On Constitutionalizing a Balanced Budget On Constitutionalizing a Balanced Budget Joe Amick Terrence Chapman Zachary Elkins [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] May 21, 2019 Abstract Do constitutional rules that mandate a balanced budget promote fiscal discipline? Although such rules are at the heart of austerity debates across the world, we know surprisingly little about their consequences. We leverage original data on constitutional budget provisions and analyze their effect on governments' primary budget balances. We find that constitutional rules that require balanced budgets are robustly associated with fiscal discipline. The constitutional effect remains even after controlling for statutory balanced-budget rules. Furthermore, the effect strengthens as constitutions become more difficult to amend, and under conditions of borderline solvency { two implications consistent with a constitutional impact. The results will be surprising to those who appreciate both the strong pressures against fiscal discipline and the creativity of governments in devising strategies to evade spending limits. These findings are among the first cross-national, over-time study of the impact of constitutional budget commitments and, therefore, provide a reference point for policy debates surrounding financial crises in many national contexts. Keywords - public finances; constitutional amendments; balanced budget rules, primary balance Supplementary materials will be available in an online appendix. Replication files are available in the JOP Data Archive on Dataverse (http://thedata.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/jop) 2 1 Introduction The struggle to control public spending is pervasive, and the essential problem is easy to grasp. One useful characterization sees the problem as a common pool resource challenge (Weingast et al. 1981; Hallerberg and von Hagen 2009; Bawn and Rosenbluth 2006): politicians face incentives to maximize spending for their constituents but fewer incentives to rein in aggregate spending. The typical result is that total spend- ing often exceeds revenue; governments consequently borrow to finance the gap, and, ultimately, develop persistent deficit-spending habits and mounting debt. Leaders often seek to institutionalize budget rules to avoid this problem. One of the simpler approaches is one that resonates with citizens: require that disburse- ments equal receipts (a balanced-budget rule). Of course, politicians are tempted to modify or ignore these rules when faced with short-term political exigencies. One way to overcome such a \time-inconsistency" problem is to entrench budget rules constitutionally, under the premise that constitutions are more difficult to alter than are administrative rules. Constitutional rules may also be more difficult to evade and easier to enforce, yet what exactly are the effects of constitutionalizing budget rules? Are their effects on budgets substantially different from those of non-constitutional (whether statutory or regulatory) rules? These questions are at the heart of institutional design, among whose challenges are to (1) strike a balance between commitment and flexibility, and (2) adjust incentives to avoid collectively sub-optimal outcomes. The Greek debt crisis following the 2008 recession is illustrative of this challenge. The crisis stems from 2009, when the Greek finance ministry announced that previous governments had hidden debt levels, a revelation that caused Greek bond yields to skyrocket. Amidst fears of a default, the IMF and EU intervened with a bailout deal that included demands for budget reform. Three bailouts later, the Greek economy is still roiling from these events. Could the crisis have been averted with a different set of institutional rules regarding the accumulation of public debt? Specifically, would a constitutional balanced-budget provision have had any effect? Some clearly think so. Following the European financial crisis, countries took steps to entrench budget rules constitutionally. The European Fiscal Compact (formally, the Treaty on Stability, Co- ordination, and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union), which entered into force for 16 ratifying states in January 2013, represents a binding commitment to do such. By April 2014, all twenty-five signatories had ratified the treaty. Under the treaty, signatories must implement domestic legal changes that require a balanced budget. The treaty requires that provisions be implemented in 1 domestic law, \preferably" in constitutions (Fiscal Compact, Article 3, Section 2). Although the compact is not formally EU law, its provisions allow for enforcement through the European Court of Justice, which can levy a fine of up to 0.1 percent of GDP for noncompliance (Fiscal Compact, Article 8). While the compact does not require that signatories enact a constitutional provision, a strong preference for a constitutionalized budget law represents an extraordinary attempt to tie governments' hands. This preference for constitutionalization was not added lightly; some governments (e.g., Ireland) resisted any such language { a recognition, perhaps, of the strength of constitutional commitment.1 As of January 2019, seven of the twenty-five signatories had constitutionalized a balanced-budget provision.2 The Greek and broader European experience is not unique. Austerity proponents in the United States periodically issue calls to add a constitutional balanced budget clause to the constitution. Re- searchers at the U.S. Congressional Research Service have documented dozens of such proposals and seemingly continual legislative committee hearings and floor debates since the 1930's (Saturno and Lynch 2018). A statement from Texas Senator John Cornyn in 2016 captures the standard line in favor of such a rule: \we are on an unsustainable course, and so far we've done nothing to address it. We can address our nation's runaway debt through a balanced budget amendment, the kind of fiscal rule that can put us back on course" (emphasis added).3 It is not surprising to hear calls for austerity from conservative leaders (especially in campaign mode) and a balanced-budget rule is a straightforward articulation of that view. Yet even left-oriented politicians have supported balanced budget amendments. In 1995, then Senator Biden, explaining his support for a balanced budget amendment in a New York Times op-ed, wrote \The question for me is not whether the budget must be in perfect balance. The question is whether we can indefinitely sustain deficits of 200 billion and more without permanently and dangerously limiting future options for our children's generation."4 Of course, these calls may ring hollow in a constitutional environment like that in the United States where amendments are rarely adopted. As we will show, the seeming futility of balanced-budget adoption at the federal level in the United States is exceptional. A growing number of national constitutions contain such a provision, especially now that international organizations and treaties encourage the practice. Unfortunately, policy makers in capi- 1See Burret and Schnellenbach (2014) for more on the fiscal compact. Kohler and Koenig (2015) provide an analysis of the Stability and Growth Pact and find that it produced uneven deficit-reducing results since 1999. 2Balanced-budget provisions are tracked by the Comparative Constitutions Project and in-force provisions for such are available online at constituteproject.org 3Juliegrace Brufke. "Senate GOP Lawmakers Want Balanced Budget Amendment Added To Constitution." The Libertarian Republican 17 March 2016. 4Joe Biden. '\Why I switched." The New York Times. 25 February 1995. 2 tal cities can only guess at the effects of these laws. Because politicians often hurdle the \parchment barriers" of higher law, it remains an open question as to whether balanced budget provisions are effective at control- ling public debt.5 Moreover, countries that undertake the extreme measure of requiring a balanced budget in their constitution may be those that are most in need of fiscal discipline, and hence least likely to be solvent. Conversely, adopters may be those countries in which fulfilling such a provision is easiest, leading analysts to overestimate the provision's effectiveness. Whichever group is more susceptible, the motivation for implementing such provisions must be considered in any analysis of their effects. This article is among the first to assess cross-nationally whether constitutional balanced budget provisions contribute to less deficit spending.6 We do so by leveraging yearly data on constitutional provisions covering 52 countries from 1950 to 2011, and comparing the effects of constitutional provisions to lower-level, statutory budget rules. We begin by reviewing work on the role of constitutional provisions in budgetary governance. Second, we expand on theories of constitutions as both commitment and coordination devices and apply these theories to budget law. In this vein, we develop theory about the kinds of provisions in constitutions that are most likely to be enforced. Third, we describe some of the historical detail and distribution of balanced-budget provisions in the world's constitutions. Finally, we analyze cross-national time-series data on the relationship between budget provisions (constitutional and statutory) and budget balances. We also analyze within-country data on balances over time for a small set of cases that experienced a shift in their constitutional provision on balanced budgets. On the whole, the evidence
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